Posted
by
timothy
on Saturday July 31, 2010 @01:36PM
from the cool-one-up-man-ship dept.

hasanabbas1987 writes "It's just been a few months since a 45-gigapixel panorama of Dubai claimed the title of world's largest digital photograph, but it's now already been well and truly ousted — the new king in town is this 70-gigapixel, 360-degree panorama of Budapest. As with other multi-gigapixel images, this one was no easy feat, and involved two 25-megapixel Sony A900 cameras fitted with 400mm Minolta lenses and 1.4X teleconverters, a robotic camera mount from 360world that got the shooting done over the course of two days, and two solid days of post-processing that resulted in a single 200GB file — not to mention a 15-meter-long printed copy of the photograph for good measure. Of course, what's most impressive is the photo itself [Note: requires Silverlight]."

Please excuse my utter ignorance, but what is wrong (philosophically, security-wise, or wishing leprosy on oneself, etc.) with installing Moonlight [go-mono.com] for a quick peek at the picture? Can it be uninstalled? I feel like the little fishy who's mesmerized by the angler fishs' lure...

Without looking at the code, I speculated that if the server thought it was IE8 and served up the silverlight content, moonlight might be able to display it. The problem isn't that I don't have a plugin that can handle the content (to my knowledge, moonlight should display it just fine), the problem is that the dumb website won't even give me the content, because it thinks I can't display it.

<blockquote>Please excuse my utter ignorance, but what is wrong (philosophically, security-wise, or wishing leprosy on oneself, etc.) with installing Moonlight for a quick peek at the picture?</blockquote>Just about everything you mentioned is wrong with it, yeah.

I want flash to die. Now, even if it reminds me of Vampires in my browser, sucking my CPU-blood, I don't want it to die because of Silverlight or any other Werewolf which could turn at moonlight into something else. I want them to die t

I was disappointed in it because of the location they shot from. It's taken from János hegy. Although this is the highest point in Budapest, it is so far from the city itself that there isn't much to see.

There is some waffle on the page about why they chose that point. They say it is the highest point and that the observation platform there will have its 100th anniversary in September. But then there is mention of the support and cooperation that they had from the district council for that distri

So you say I should wait until monday, go to a store, fork over some cash to buy a copy of Windows, spend some time setting it up and installing Silverlight... and then claim it's unreasonable to say that they should've chosen a format that is easily available to everyone?

Choice is very much dependent on perspective. It's hardly valid to claim that it's your fault if you chose not to own a Ferrari.Many people could if they really stretched out, got some credits, etc... but it's not worth to them.The same wa

Choice is very much dependent on perspective. It's hardly valid to claim that it's your fault if you chose not to own a Ferrari.

If the technology in question was like a Ferrari - rare, expensive, and available only to a few... you'd have a point. But the technology in question is more like a Kia - widely available and relatively cheap.The only way not to be able to view is to be in one of two minorities.

The first are those too poor to afford a computer able to view the image. (Which by you

Selective quoting doesn't get you far when I've addressed the issue in the same comment.

I might as well selectively quote since you're selectively reading.

But the point still stands: accessibility matters, artificial barriers are bad.

If there was an artificial barrier - you'd have a point. But there isn't, you've created the whole thing out of thin are. So all you have is confused flailing and ever more strained and bizarre analogies in order to create the impression that there is one.

This is probably a beautiful photograph that I will never see because I choose not to use the technology required.

Okay, so I need to go and buy a copy of Microsoft Windows to view it. Then I find I need to buy a new computer, because my existing one isn't compatible with Windows (the graphics card, sound card and network card aren't supported). Oh, and then I need to go and buy some expensive training courses to learn how to use Microsoft Windows, because I've never actually had to use it before.

The they have scenes were you can zoom in to certain parts of the photo. The one that zooms in on the nude beach where it appears that they're filming some sort of Playboy type of thing is really nice.

Silverblight aside, they expect me to judge its beauty on a Netbook screen? This may be a 70GP photo, but its not going to look any better than what I could stitch together from photos I've taken with a cheapo Cannon digital.

Technology is great if it serves the art. This is just a demo of the tech, unfortunately. You'd think with all that time and effort it would have been worth paying a photographer to decide on the content. Oh well...

Matter of principle? He may have Silverlight installed because he's on a shared computer and someone else uses Silverlight, or as part of a corporate rollout, or even because his employment currently (or once) involved Silverlight development, but that doesn't mean he doesn't have standards.

Nah, personal comp, just wanted to play some stupid FB games that I no longer play (and never played often to begin with). I forgot I had it installed still until yesterday and am still to lazy to just uninstall it (I do have it deleted though).

That's the same as people NOT doing things because it's the IN thing. It's no better morally than just doing the IN thing and going with the crowd. I'd check it out if I had silverlight. I like to keep crap out of my install so I avoid things like Silverlight and Quicktime and Realplayer and whatnot... (Is Real still even around?) Most of the content of the shitty, ugly formats are available in other formats. Eventually there's a divx version of everything.

You are right, it pretty much is the same as doing the in thing. I don't claim any moral ground on this issue.

I just want to keep Silverlight disabled until I uninstall it.

QT and RealPlayer (which is still around) are necessary because your assumption of them eventually being available in other formats is fallacious. As evidenced by my Winamp install (along with Windows Media Player not being able to find the codecs to play them, either) will not play the videos of any the MP4s that I download from YouTube

Quicktime is not the only program that can play mp4 files... libmpeg2 and libavcodec can decode the video and Haali can split the container format. Then you can view those videos in any directshow player like WMP or MPC.

It seems like Google Earth qualifies as a much larger "picture".... continuously linked pixels creating a visual representation of reality resembling that which you would see if you looked with your eyes.

Define "picture" or "photograph" as you will... many map databases integrate images to create images that are vastly larger and more interactive.

I don't hate Microsoft. I just need a safe secure OS which I can build from source code. As soon as Microsoft makes the source code to Windows available to, and for use by, all Windows licensees (this does not need to be GPL or other license... it can remain proprietary), then I might be able to use it (depending on how easy it is to fix).

I just viewed it. Its pretty awesome actually. Since you can't view it (?) let me describe it for you. When fully zoomed out, Budapest appears is a (pretty small) city in the distance and most of what you see is the surrounding countryside. Then with a very smooth zoom you keep zooming towards the city, until you see very clearly individual buildings and even people in the windows. Can you show me a Flash example of something like that?

You're right. But, for the sake of argument -- if they wanted more people to see the photo, they should have used the platform that's installed on 99% of internet-enabled computers. If they'd used ajax/html5, that would also limit their audience, just to a different demographic.

The question is: do they want people to see the photo, or do they want to make a statement about standards? (and the answer is probably -- they want Microsoft's sponsorship money, so they used Silverlight...)

Lets make sure that this discussion focuses on the fact that they presented it in Silverlight and not the open and saintly Flash format. I don't want to veer offtopic here into discussing "gigapixels" and "robotic camera stands". That's not what this site is about.

Lets make sure that this discussion focuses on the fact that they presented it in Silverlight and not the open and saintly Flash format.

Nobody likes Adobe Flash (excepted for Apple bashing time).We now have HTML5.However Flash is an important legacy format that we can't yet ignore (especially when all major browsers don't support HTML5 yet).Silverlight became legacy before ever gaining significant marketshare. Why should we care ? Also, as pointed by blirp [slashdot.org], it's not really cross-platforms.

Therefore, expect the same kind of off-topic threads that we get with paywalls or slashdotted links. No access to the material implies random off-topic di

It's fine if they want to use Silverlight, but from what I can tell (maybe I'm wrong) they are only relying on the Web browser's useragent string to check if it can run the application. With the latest release of Moonlight installed on FF/Ubuntu, the default response I got from the website indicates I need to have Silverlight on Windows or Mac. If I switch to an IE8 useragent string (using useragent switcher), it then tells me I need Silverlight 3. I then tried switching to a useragent setting for FF on

So what is the point of making images this big in the first place? They didn't create an image, they created data for a specific application that not everyone can run and a lot more would rather not run for security reasons. What we need is a well defined and open protocol for fetching the images as needed in little squares. Maybe HTTP. If we get that, then we'd only need Javascript and maybe we could even view the landmasses of the Earth that way.

The point is to make the image as large as possible. Sometimes the goal is the reason. I doubt they said,"Let's make an image that we can distribute with Silverlight." they probably chose Silverlight because it allows you to see the entire image without having to actually download the entire image all at once.

This becomes considerably less impressive when you realize that this image is done with sponsorship from major partners, whereas images like the Dubai picture, or the 50 Gigapixel image in Vienna [photoartkalmar.com] were both done by individuals.

These were impressive many years ago because someone had to build the hardware and write the software to do this, but now they sell kits. [gigapansystems.com]

Please/., don't post a story when they reach 78 gigapixel or 83 gigapixel or 92 gigapixel or whatever,/. already did stories on 8.6 GP [slashdot.org], 26 GP [slashdot.org], and now we have a story on 70 GP. Just tell me when we reach 100, then 500, and 1000.

This becomes considerably less impressive when you realize that this image is done with sponsorship from major partners, whereas images like the Dubai picture, or the 50 Gigapixel image in Vienna were both done by individuals.

Check out the 36th house on the left, if you zoom in enough you can just about see a quarter of a boob through the half opened window. Not enough mega pixels to see if its a female or male booby though:(

And the ability to zoom in to certain views was pretty awesome. If Ansel Adams were alive today, I wonder what his opinion would be and if he would use such a technique. He would have ot do something. Many of the films he liked to use are no longer in production - at least in the 4x5 format he liked.

And the ability to zoom in to certain views was pretty awesome. If Ansel Adams were alive today, I wonder what his opinion would be and if he would use such a technique. He would have ot do something. Many of the films he liked to use are no longer in production - at least in the 4x5 format he liked.

Don't insult the name of Ansel Adams.

I'm a photographer myself, and I have yet to see a gigapan that looks lood. Why do people think that the resolution is interesting at all? A photo is all about capturing something interesting, and that requires hard work from the guy behind the camera. Gigapixel is the latest excuse for lazy photographers to make boring photos. A great (no, let me say legendary) photographer like Adams doesn't need gigapans. And large format photography is alive and kicking, btw.

Just wait -- Google Earth is going to be exactly this. You'll be able to look at how much mustard people are adding at the hotdog stand, and what number they're dialing on their mobile. It'll be voyeur paradise. Don't think it'll just be done from satellites, either -- street view will eventually tap into those nice big camera networks like in London, and they'll rent spots on cellular towers so they can mount their own cameras.

When you google someone's name in a couple of years, the first result will b

It doesn't count because it's using a simple portable system to display, scroll, pan, and zoom. For corporate sponsorship, you have to use something proprietary, and avoid all that communist open stuff.

I'm no anti-MS zealot, but even I won't install Silverlight. For anything.
OK... if YouTube stopped working then I probably would; but that's not happening.
Give it up, guys. I don't need any more of that kind of crap on my machine.

Didn't the almighty Shuttleworth just tel us about the linux version of that? Apparently Microsoft made their own version for Windows users. I'm sure they'll tweak a few things, make it completely incompatible with Linux, and then brand their 'improved' version Microsoft Factionism.